This isn’t an official sequel to the 1931 Universal Studios film Dracula but it really feels like it, except that Lugosi’s name is Armand Tesla and this is made by Columbia. This would be the actor’s last major studio movie.

Lady Jane Ainsley (Frieda Inescort) is stalked by Tesla twice, once during the first World War and again during the second. The first time they crossed paths, she ended up staking him and freeing Andréas, a werewolf, from his curse. He becomes her assistant and his makeup would go on to be used again in 1956’s The Werewolf.

Twenty four years later, during the blitz, some cemetery workers find the body of Tesla and remove the stake from his heart, thinking that it’s shrapnel. Now Tesla walks the Earth again, with Andréas back in thrall, taking the name of Hugo Bruckner, a scientist who has escaped from a concentration camp and is coming to work with Ainsley. Meanwhile, Sir Fredrick Fleet of Scotland Yard believes that Ainsley is a murderer and that there’s no way there can be a vampire.

Director Lew Landers also made 175 other movies, with probably The Raven being his best-known film.

It’s pretty wild that Columbia did everything they could to make their own Dracula movie. Universal did threaten to sue, as they had the Lon Chaney Jr.-starring Son of Dracula coming out. If you think you may have seen this before, it is the movie playing in Iron Maiden’s video for “Number of the Beast.”

Reginald Le Borg was a banker in Austria and a director in America, making low budget horror at Universal like The Mummy’s Ghost and Weird Woman. Released along with The Creeping Unknown, it was ahead of the Shock Theater package that would ignite a new interest in Universal’s horror movies. It’s also Bela Lugosi’s last movie, although footage of him appears in  Plan 9 from Outer Space.

Dr. Gordon Ramsay (Herbert Rudley) claims that he is innocent yet remains in jail, guilty of murder, when surgeon Sir Joel Cadman (Basil Rathbone) offers him a chance at redemption. All he has to do is assist him with some experiments, starting with taking a potion called The Black Sleep, which will put him into a deathlike slumber.

After the “dead” body of Ramsay is discovered in his cell, Cadman takes the body for burial and revives Ramsay back in his lab. There, he’s attempting to learn the mysteries of the brain so that he can bring his wife Angelina (Louanna Gardner) back to life. One of his servants, Mungo (Lon Chaney Jr.) was once Doctor Monroe, one of Ramsay’s former teachers. Now he’s a monstrous beast barely under control. And then there’s the mute — and frightening — Casimir (Bela Lugosi).

So why do Laurie (Patricia Blake), Odo (Akim Tamiroff, who replaced Peter Lorre, who wanted more than this production could pay for) and Daphnae (Phyllis Stanley) work for him? It turns out that Laurie is Mungo’s daughter and wants her father to be normal again. That said, there’s an entire basement filled with experiments that haven’t worked, broken human beings — like Tor Johnson — led by a maniacal preacher named Borg (John Carradine). They’re so close to breaking through the doors to the lab…

The Black Sleep has a great cast but doesn’t do much with them. But it’s a fast movie and if you don’t think too much — or want to hear Bela speak — you may enjoy it.

You can watch this on Tubi.

I despise the notion that Ed Wood was a horrible filmmaker. Sure, his movies aren’t technically proficient and are often pretty maudlin in moments, but he’s an actual auteur. For this movie, he didn’t just direct and write, he also starred as Daniel Davies. Who else could? After all, Wood convinced producer George Weiss that he was the perfect director for this movie as he was a real-life transvestite.

In this movie, Wood takes pains to emphasize that a male transvestite is not automatically a homosexual. He swore that he had never had a single homosexual relationship in his life and was considered a womanizer. He also was given to directing his adult work in full drag and claimed that his greatest fantasy was to come back as a gorgeous blonde. Yet he still would say that he was comforted by the feel of angora.

So while the Golden Turkey Awards may give Wood the title of Worst Director of All Time and Leonard Maltin may say that this is “possibly the worst movie ever made,” it has heart. An inept heart, but heart.

A transvestite who has been to prison four times for cross-dressing has killed themselves, saying “Let my body rest in death forever, in the things I cannot wear in life.”

This leads Dr. Alton (Wood player Timothy Farrell) to seek out Glen, another man who loves to dress as the other sex, often stealing the clothing of his fiancee Barbara (Dolores Fuller, Wood’s girlfriend at the time). Glen is struggling between being honest with Barbara before their wedding or telling her afterward. Through extended dream sequences, he finally comes to terms with who he is and his other side, revealing it to her. As she hands him an angora sweater, she accepts every side of him.

The doctor then learns of another person, Alan/Anne. Anne was born a boy, but her mother wanted a girl and raised her that way, which left her abused throughout school. Despite hiding her true self during the war, she has since had an operation to become “a lovely young lady.”

Let me tell you, this kind of movie is incendiary in 2022. This was made in 1953.

A movie with these words, which we should live by: “Give this man satin undies, a dress, a sweater and a skirt, or even the lounging outfit he has on, and he’s the happiest individual in the world. He can work better, think better, he can play better, and he can be more of a credit to his community and his government because he is happy.”

So yes, Ed Wood isn’t someone with a cinematic eye. But he put himself — all of himself — on the screen. That’s worthy of celebration.

The inclusion of Bela Lugosi is as well. That’s what takes this movie from message movie to true oddity, as Bela plays The Scientist, a character unconnected to any narrative that begins the film and is not even the narrator, much like how Encounter with the Unknown decides to have a second uncredited voice take the role because just having Rod Serling is not enough.

“Beware. Beware. Beware of the big, green dragon that sits on your doorstep. He eats little boys, puppy dog tails and big, fat snails. Beware. Take care. Beware.

Wood would bring back Glen/Glenda again in two of his novels. Killer in Drag has Glen/Glenda becoming a serial killer while Death of a Transvestite has Glen/Glenda being executed.

You can watch this on Tubi.

In The 50 Worst Films of All Time–and How They Got That Way by Harry Medved and Randy Dreyfuss, this movie is destroyed. And yet it also ruined lives, with actress Anna Prucnal — just for being in this movie — finding herself exiled from her native Poland for seven years even being denied a visa to see her dying mother. Her role was added to the movie after the original protagonist Miss Canada (Carole Laure, Strange Shadows in an Empty Room) quit the film, saying “I admire Dusan very much but after he signed me to the movie, he asked me to do things no human being could do. I had to refuse. I could not do these things as a person, let alone an actress. I don’t mean sex scenes, to them I have no objection if the script is right. I mean much worse things than that.”

Director Dušan Makavejev was a member of the Black Wave of filmmaking creating some of the most interesting films of Yugoslav cinema in the late 1960s and early 1970s, including W.R.: Mysteries of the Organism, which is all about Wilhelm Reich, who was interested in the energy of the orgasm.

Miss Canada has won the award of being “most virgin” and given to a milk industry tycoon (John Vernon, how did he end up in this!?!) who treats her brutally, so she tried to leave and is taken away by the family bodyguard, who uses her for his own needs, then packs her in a suitcase for Paris, where she falls in love with singer El Macho, until nuns frighten them into sexual paralysis. She finally ends up in a commune where members are literally reborn, puking, urinating and defecating around one another before she ends up in a chocolate commercial that feels way too close to the roman, yellow and brown showers that we’ve just watched. I mean, if you watched it. I wouldn’t blame you if you looked away.

At the same time, Anna Planeta (Prucnal) and her candy-filled, Karl Marx decorated boat floats through Amsterdam, as the sailor Potemkin gets on board and falls for her. She keeps telling him that she will kill him, but love makes you blind, so in the midst of making love, she follows through. She may have also murdered and definitely abused numerous children — whose bodies line the canal which plays alongside footage of the remains of the Polish Katyn Massacre victims — and is arrested just as the children come back to life.

Francis Ford Coppola liked Makavejev’s directing so much that he wanted him to be the one to create Apocalypse Now. He picked this movie instead, a brutal punch to the stomach of anyone expecting the title of this movie to be lived up to.

In case you’re wondering what you’re getting into, Pier Paolo Pasolini dubbed the Italian dialogue.

The highest grossing film in Japan in 1973 and 1974, Submersion of Japan or Japan Sinks! was also a big deal in the U.S. Roger Corman bought the rights as part of New World Pictures and made a remix where he cut out lots of footage, added new sequences directed by Andrew Meyer (Night of the Cobra Woman) and added Lorne Greene as an ambassador at the United Nations as well as appearances by Rhonda Leigh Hopkins (Summer School Teachers), John Fujioka (Shinyuki from American Ninja), Marvin Miller (anarratorr in several movies), Susan Sennett (Candy from The Candy Snatchers), Ralph James (Sixpack Annie), Phil Roth, Cliff Pellow and Joe Dante.

Now called Tidal Wave, it came out in May of 1975, while New World also released an uncut subtitled version called Submersion of Japan in America.

If you remember when we discussed Nosutoradamusu no daiyogen, Japan was in disaster mania, predicting the end of the world at every turn. This movie was inspired by Nippon chinbotsu by Sakyô Komatsu, the same author of Virus: The End, Bye Bye Jupiter, Disappearance of the Capital and Time of the Apes. Of all his work, Komatsu’s sinking story was so popular that it became a TV series in 1974 and was remade in 2006 as Doomsday: The Sinking of Japan, then remade again as the 2020 TV mini-series Japan Sinks 2020, which was so big that it played theaters and spun off another series, Japan Sinks: People of Hope.

There was even a 2006 parody, Nihon igai zenbu chinbotsu, which means The World Sinks Except Japan.

This was no cheap picture. Director Shirô Moritani has been second unit on Yojimbo while writer Shinobu Hashimoto was behind Rashomon, Seven Samurai, The Hidden Fortress and Throne of Blood amongst many other movies, as well as the director of Lake of Illusions, Minami no kaze to nami and I Want to Be a Shellfish.

Two hundred million years ago, what we know as the Earth was a single continent which split up over the years. At one point, Japan was part of the continent of Asia. But now? If you read the title, spoiler, Japan is going to sink. The first people to find out are geophysicist Dr. Tadokoro (Keiju Kobayashi, whose roles in comedies defined what post-war Japan saw as the ideal salaryman) and Onodera Toshio (Hiroshi Fujioka, the original Kamen Rider) take their submarine Wadatsumi-1 to the Ogasawara Islands. How bad is it? Well, the land mass that makes up the islands of Japan itself are about to collapse into a trench.

While Onodera is falling for Abe Reiko (Ayumi Ishida), volcanos start to erupt and earthquakes break out with more frequency. A rich businessman named Mr. Watari (Shōgo Shimada) pays for a series of expeditions to discover if Japan can be saved. But just like our climate, it’s already too late. Unlike our crisis, Japan has three choices: form a new country, seek a home in other countries or accept the end of the country and die.

They only have ten months to decide and as many countries offer to help, I’m reminded that as much as I love Japan, it’s an incredibly racist country. Even in a fictional story, South Korea, China and Taiwan refuse to help them. By the end, as the country sinks into the sea, more than half the population remains to go down with the ship. And our hero and heroine? They’re seperated a world away from one another.

You know who is in this? Turkish born actor Andrew Hughes, a businessman based in Tokyo as an import-export businessman who shows up in so many Japanese films from the late 1950s to the mid-1980s, usually in minor roles but even playing Hitler in The Crazy Adventure. The Japanese prime minister is played by Nobuo Nakamura, who was in Kurosawa’s films, but the really interesting actor is the man playing the driver of the Japanese leader. He’s played by Haruo Nakajima, who played Godzilla from 1954’s original film to 1972’s Godzilla vs. Gigan. After this role, he went to work in Toho’s bowling alley. I wish I was making that up.

This movie has some amazing alternate titles, such as Panic Over Tokyo (West Germany and I’m shocked that Frankenstein was not involved, as his name was on every Toho Godzilla movie releasd there), The Fall of Japan (Belgium), Death in the Rising Sun (Portugal knows how to name a movie), The Sun Does Not Rise Over the Island (Czechoslovakia), Planet Earth Year Zero (Italy), S.O.S. The Earth Is Sinking (Sweden) and The End of the World (Turkey).

Roger Ebert nominated this movie for The 50 Worst Films of All Time–and How They Got That Way by Harry Medved and Randy Dreyfuss. He said, “The movie never ends, but if you wait long enough it gets to a point where it’s over.”

As for the Japanese version of the film — which lends its special effects to the aforementioned Toho Nostradamus movie — I really liked that unlike so many disaster films, the actual socioeconomic problems that the world would face get explained and shown. There’s no shortage of waves crushing everything in their way, but at least we learn something.

You can watch the original Japanese version of this movie at the Internet Archive.

Hendrik Willem van Loon, a Dutch-American historian, wrote and illustrated The Story of Mankind in 1921. The book is a unique exploration of the history of Western civilization, told through a series of brief chapters. Van Loon’s narrative style is characterized by his constant questioning of the pivotal role of certain individuals or events in shaping the course of history. He often asks, ‘Did the person or event in question perform an act without which the entire history of civilization would have been different?‘

Thirty years later, former publicist Irwin Allen, in a bold move, chose the book as his first non-documentary film. He directed, wrote, and produced the movie, initially planning for only an actor and actress to appear in the film. However, he then decided to take a page out of the recent box office hit Around the World In 80 Days and assembled a cast of nearly fifty stars to tell the story. This unique approach, along with the use of lots of repurposed B-roll from other movies and stock footage, makes The Story of Mankind a truly one-of-a-kind cinematic experience.

Ronald Colman is The Spirit of Man, and Vincent Price is Mr. Scratch. They’re testifying in front of a tribunal that will decide the fate of mankind, who has created a Super H-Bomb, and the powers that run the universe will determine whether they stop the bomb or allow it to destroy the human race. That leads to a cavalcade of stardom, with Hedy Lamarr as Joan of Arc,  Virginia Mayo as Cleopatra, Agnes Moorehead as Queen Elizabeth I, Peter Lorre as Nero, Charles Coburn as Hippocrates, along with all three Marx Brothers in their last film together.

But wait — there’s more. Cesar Romero! John Carradine! Dennis Hopper as Napoleon!  Francis X. Bushman as Moses! Jim Ameche, taking over the role his brother made famous, Alexander Graham Bell!

They are all on sets that seem made for TV, with dialogue made for the grade school stage. Yes, The Story of Mankind certainly is something else. Everyone in this showed up for one day to film their part and was all paid pretty well. The movie’s odd presentation, resembling a religious epic with no religion, adds an intriguing element to the viewing experience.

When asked if the film was based on a book, Colman replied, “Yes. But they are using only the notes on the dust jacket.”

There was a comic book, though. Dell released an adaption written by Gaylord Du Bois and illustrated by Bob Jenney.

Sam Peckinpah said, “For me, Hollywood no longer exists. It’s past history. I’ve decided to stay in Mexico because I believe I can make my pictures with greater freedom from here.”

With the exception of a few key people, Peckinpah made this movie with a Mexican crew, including camerman Alex Phillips, Jr., who hared wide-angle lenses, loved zooms and who created a multiple camera setup that allowed Peckinpah to basically edit the film in his head as he shot.

It also allowed him lots of creative freedom and to capture the bleak world that he wanted. Shooting at a bar called the Tlaquepaque, he said out loud that this place was real. It was — the owner had once killed a woman on the premises and bribed the right people to make it go away.

And the results, sure, they ended up in the Medved co-authored The Fifty Worst Movies of All Time, but Roger Ebert said, “Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia is Sam Peckinpah making movies flat out, giving us a desperate character he clearly loves, and asking us to somehow see past the horror and the blood to the sad poem he’s trying to write about the human condition.”

Who is Garcia? He was once the man selected to be the successor for El Jefe (Emilio Fernández), but he messed up when he knocked up the boss’ daughter Teresa, putting a million dollar bounty on his head. Two months pass before two hit men, Sappensly (Robert Webber) and Quill (Gig Young), walk into the saloon where Bennie (Warren Oates) plays piano.

He claimns he doesn’t know who Garcia is yet he surely does. He’s the man who his lover Elita (Isela Vega) cheated on him with. He confronts her as to the man’s whereabouts and learns that he died in an accident. Easy money — he gets $10,000 for Garcia’s head, plus a $200 advance for expenses, and takes Elita along with him to dig the grave. On the way, he proposes to her, telling her that she can retire and they can live in peace, but we know that can never happen as the moment they get there, they’re attacked by bikers (Kris Kristofferson and Donnie Fritts) who nearly assault her before Bernie comes to and dispatches them both. As he starts digging the grave, against the protests of Elita, he’s knocked out. He wakes up buried alive with his girl dead by his side, the body of Garcia already missing its head. Oates took mushrooms before this scene, so he’s really living this experience.

Arguing with the head, which has been packed in a sack with dry ice, Bennie leads a death march across Mexico, with everyone in his way dying, death always at his side, waiting for him, as he begins to realize that the head means nothing at all to him or anyone else. The money was meaningless. The revenge doesn’t matter. Yet he must follow through.

Warren Oates copied Peckinpah to play his part, right down to borrowing a pair of sunglasses from the director. And this was the only time that the maverick creator ever got final cut on one of his movies. The twosome also bonded over cocaine, which only added to the air of paranoia and doom that fills every single second of this movie.

I can see why some would dislike and even hate this movie, but for me, it just plain sings. The song may be abrasive, it may be filled with anger, but it’s a song nonetheless.

The first of eight movies that Lon Chaney would make with director Tod Browing (The Blackbird, The Road to Mandalay, London After Midnight, The Unknown, The Big City, West of Zanzibar and Where East Is East are the others),

Tweedledee (Harry Earles) is a small man who leaves the circus when he assaults a young heckler and starts a riot. He’s joined by the incredibly strong Hercules (Victor McLaglen), Professor Echo (Chaney), a ventriloquist who becomes pet shop owner Mrs. O’Grady and his pickpocket girlfriend Rosie O’Grady (Mae Busch), who pretends to be his granddaughter.

Their new scam? Sell pets, deliver them and come back and steal everything. Their scheme brings in the innocent Hector McDonald (Matt Moore), who falls for Rosie. Browning was always using the duality of identity in his films and this one has every character nearly becoming someone else, but their crimes bind them.

The Unholy Three was remade in 1930, directed by Jack Conway. Chaney returned as Echo and Earles as Tweedledee, while Hercules would be played by Ivan Linow and Rosie by Lila Lee. This movie proved that Chaney was not only the Man of a Thousand Faces, but also the Man of A Thousand Voices. It’s the only film in his career where Chaney would speak.